Michela Wrong on writing her first novel

How does it feel releasing a  novel for the first time? How do you think the audience will receive it?

It’s very frightening. It’s something new and you don’t know how your audience will react – I’m sure there will be some people who will say ‘I prefer your non-fiction’ – but you hope you’ll reach a new audience that doesn’t read non-fiction.

A lot of people don’t read non-fiction of any kind.

Although, to be honest, it’s still quite early and I’ve only had three reviews: The Guardian, The Financial Times, and The Spectator.

The book’s has only been out for about three weeks, and I think it’s been a good reaction – there have been good reviews.

Sometimes you have to convince people a non-fiction writer can stretch to writing fiction. Some people have a sort of mental block about that, but I think there are so many writers that have made that transition. I don’t really understand why it’s a problem.

What is the book about and what inspired you?

It is about a British lawyer who is recruited to represent a government in the Horn of Africa – a little nation that has had a border war with its neighbour, which now wants to prove where its border lies, in The Hague.

And this is actually something that we saw happening between Eritrea and Ethiopia after their 1998-2000 war.

I spent a long time writing about Eritrea, and so I got interested in that legal process. It also happened in South Sudan, where the oil-rich region of Abyei had its borders negotiated.

So it seemed to me, given that colonial borders in Africa are very much under challenge, it was a good theme for a novel.

Lawyer Paula Shackleton is mourning a lost love when she meets Winston Peabody, a litigator in search of a cause. He represents the African state of North Darrar, embroiled in a border arbitration case and needs help with the hearings in The Hague.

Paula needs to forget the past.

She flies to the state capital determined to lose herself in work, but soon discovers that even jobs taken with the purest intentions can swiftly become morally compromised.

Taking testimony in scorching refugee camps, delving into the colonial past, she becomes increasingly uneasy about her role. Budding friendships with a scarred former rebel and an idealistic young doctor whittle away at her pose of sardonic indifference, until Paula finds herself taking a step no decent lawyer should ever contemplate.

How long did it take to research for the book?

I didn’t do research consistently because I have a day-job, and also the project got interrupted for various reasons. All in all, I’ve been doing it for about four years. I did a lot of research because I wanted the legal stuff to make sense.

So I spoke to lawyers who were experts on International Arbitration, because arbitration is different from a court case. It’s definitely a kind of jazzed up version of what would happen in reality; the reality of international arbitration over a border is quite dry.

So it’s more interesting than a real case would be, but the essence of it is based on fact.

So your characters were also inspired by actual people?

I’ve met people like the characters over the years, working in Africa, but you never just take a person and transpose them into a character.

They’re always a mix of people you’ve talked to over the years, and then you invent as well.

You end up with a character that you’ve invented, but believe in. You have to believe in the character or it’s not going to work for the reader.

How was the transition from non-fiction to fiction?

Writing a novel is very liberating, because you can explore things that you can’t write about in non-fiction; you can explore emotions, motives, you can be much more passionate, irrational.

If you’re writing non-fiction all the time you’re always on the surface. In fiction, you can go underneath the skin of characters and events.

In non-fiction you have to tell the reader when you’re speculating. You have to say “I know this was true, but we don’t know why he did it”. With fiction you can just invent these motives.

It’s exciting writing fiction, if you haven’t done it before, because it’s more about your writing style. What matters, as a non-fiction writer, are the facts – did you get the facts right?

In contrast, fiction is much about how you express yourself, whether or not you use clichés, your metaphors, the ease and elegance of your writing.

Hardback copies of the novel were going for Sh2,900 at Bookstop. The first batch has sold out.